Amazon offers one-hour shipping in Manhattan

Amazon’s Prime Now will deliver certain items within an hour to a select area in Manhattan for $7.99. Two-hour delivery is free.

Amazon’s Prime Now will deliver certain items within an hour to a select area in Manhattan for $7.99. Two-hour delivery is free.

Photo: Aaron P. Bernstein / Getty Images

Photo: Aaron P. Bernstein / Getty Images

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Amazon’s Prime Now will deliver certain items within an hour to a select area in Manhattan for $7.99. Two-hour delivery is free.

Amazon’s Prime Now will deliver certain items within an hour to a select area in Manhattan for $7.99. Two-hour delivery is free.

Photo: Aaron P. Bernstein / Getty Images

Amazon offers one-hour shipping in Manhattan

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Amazon.com introduced a service Thursday that promises one-hour delivery of household products to its Prime customers in select areas of Manhattan.

Thousands of products like paper towels, shampoo, books, toys and batteries will get delivered within 60 minutes, Amazon said.

“There are times when you can’t make it to the store and other times when you simply don’t want to go,” said Dave Clark, Amazon’s senior vice president of worldwide operations, in announcing the service known as Prime Now.

The service is available to customers enrolled in Amazon Prime, which costs $99 a year. One-hour delivery costs $7.99 but the company also offers two-hour delivery for free. Prime Now is available from 6 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week.

It faces tough competition, however, from other delivery services in Manhattan, such as grocers FreshDirect and Instacart, as well as Google Express, which delivers from a variety of retailers the same day.

Amazon said it hopes to roll out one-hour delivery to more cities in 2015.

The speedy delivery comes as a result of Amazon’s growing network of fulfillment centers, where technology helps it deliver orders faster. The company has 109 fulfillment centers around the world, with more than 50 in the U.S., including one in Tracy.

The company has invested heavily this year in upgrading and expanding its distribution network, adding equipment, opening more shipping centers and hiring thousands of workers to meet the increasing demand.

Amazon has focused heavily on improving its reliability in part to avoid a repeat of last year’s holiday shopping season, when some customers were disappointed by late deliveries attributed to Midwestern ice storms and last-minute shipping snarls at both UPS and FedEx.